


50 Things

by tartanfics



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-24
Updated: 2007-11-24
Packaged: 2017-12-28 20:40:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tartanfics/pseuds/tartanfics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifty things--fifty memories, fifty objects, fifty kisses, fifty days, and a handful of people--best friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	50 Things

**Author's Note:**

> These are meant to be one sentence each, but not all of them are. Oh well. This was written from prompts at a community the name of which I have since forgotten. Anyone know? By the way, this is how you can tell I've finished NaNo.
> 
> (imported from LJ 10/8/13)

** Ring: ** Sirius wears a ring on the second-to-last finger of his left hand, gold with a tiny red stone, and when he’s impatient or nervous he pulls it on and off and twists it round.

 

** Hero: ** It’s morning, and in the sunlight across their bed Sirius looks like the hero of a Greek tragedy.

 

** Memory:  ** Remus can’t remember any more what Sirius looks like before he’s had his coffee in the morning.

 

** Box:  ** Some afternoons, when Sirius is at work and Remus can’t keep staring at the pages of his book, he roots around under the bed and finds the box—there are four photos inside it.

 

** Run:  ** Dry leaves under his big paws and the scent of rabbit on the air, smell of stag and rat, and the wilder one—wolf at the head of the pack.

 

** Hurricane:  ** When Sirius is angry he _storms_ , he rages, and Remus follows behind fast as the wind must go to follow a hurricane, trying to calm him down.

 

** Wings:  ** Summers, Sirius wishes he weren’t a dog but a bird, some kind of bird that could leave the nest, because Moony is so far away.

 

** Cold:  ** Their flat isn’t very well heated, and both of them are crap at heating charms, so they huddle together under worn flannel blankets and Remus’ old tattered quilts, laughing softly at the skies.

 

** Red:  ** Sirius is eleven and short and stubborn and proud, and he has too-pointy elbows, and the hangings around his bed are Gryffindor crimson.

 

** Drink:  ** The dormitory is dark and silent, moonlight a pale consideration on the floor as Remus crosses to the window for a glass of water, and Sirius breathes out sleep.

 

** Midnight ** ** : ** It’s summer and the stars are out, but Sirius can’t see them because his nose is buried in the back of Remus’ neck.

 

** Temptation:  ** Remus knows Sirius fancies him like mad and he’s so tempted to do something about it because it’s _Sirius_ and Remus has been in love with Sirius forever, but he has no idea what to do, or how to do it. Damn.

 

** View:  ** The lake looks pink in the morning sunlight, and there’s frost around the edges of the dormitory window.

 

** Music:  ** When it rains, summer afternoons, they put on old big band records and listen to the brass instruments and the water in the gutters, and read novels.

 

** Silk:  ** The place where shoulder meets neck, the dip of his hipbone, the small of his back, spring and the rain.

****

** Cover:  ** Somewhere in their sixth year, Remus finds himself hiding all the time, huddled under the covers in the morning or behind the bookshelves during the day, peering over the edge and around the corner at the boy with the black hair and the sharp chin.

 

** Promise:  ** “I’ll bake you a cake if you want, Moony—a chocolate cake, with lots of frosting and writing on it in green ‘cause you like green and you’ve got a lot of green jumpers even if it is a Slytherin colour and you’re a traitor for wearing it—I promise.”

 

** Dream:  ** In the dream his back is against the wall and he can feel the corner of the door digging into his ribs and Sirius’ breath is hot on his face, and for some reason they’re talking about hippopotami. And then Sirius kisses him and he wakes up, and Remus mutters something about a purple hippopotamus into Sirius’ very-real mouth.

 

** Candle:  ** When the power goes out in the flat they light candles and set them around the room, and they kiss on the floor, shadows across their faces and candlelight sparkling in their eyes. Tomorrow, Remus will have to clean the dripped wax off the floor.

 

** Talent:  ** It doesn’t seem entirely fair how Sirius is so good at loving his friends, and Remus so clumsy.

 

** Silence:  ** Everything changes, and the sky is grey—there’s no rain to beat against the windows, no laughter in the tiny crowded kitchen or puppy barks at the door.

 

** Journey:  ** He’ll come back—he always comes back, and the pads of his feet will be worn and he’ll be tired, and he’ll come scratching at the door, but he’ll come back.

 

** Fire:  ** It’s one of those mornings that is so cold it catches fire to your skin, and the four of them huddle under their cloaks in the courtyard, plotting pranks.

 

** Strength:  ** A brotherly hug—and Remus realizes that Azkaban has taken none of Sirius’ strength, and it’s given him his conviction, and he hopes it hasn’t taken the other things, either.

 

** Mask:  ** It’s cold and dark and there’s shouting and flashes of red light, and Remus can feel Sirius’ presence at his side as he runs, but looking back he can’t see their faces. 

****

** Ice:  ** Charmed icicles hang from the rafters all over the school, spelled to sing Christmas carols at innocent passersby. 

 

** Fall: ** That October, the leaves turn early, and Remus finds himself sitting on a rock at the edge of the lake, staring at Sirius.

 

** Forgotten:  ** In the early hours of the morning, Sirius wakes on the cold floor of his Azkaban cell to find he’s forgotten what James’ face looked like.

** Dance: ** At James and Lily’s wedding Sirius spins him out and catches him again, like an unfurling ribbon or a party toy—it’s no surprise that Sirius knows how to dance, but no one ever knew that Remus does. 

 

** Body:  ** He is very present in his body—more so than Remus, who sometimes feels like his body is nothing more than a vessel for his thoughts. But Sirius, Sirius _lives_ in his body.

 

** Sacred:  ** It is not easy to breathe in the old chapel, and Remus sits in the back of it and wonders whether it even remembers any more that it is supposed to be Christian.

 

** Farewells:  ** It is the very last day of their last year at Hogwarts, their seventh last day, and Remus can’t help thinking about all the eleven year olds who will come to Hogwarts next year and not know their legacy.

 

** World:  ** When they were seventeen, the world seemed too small to hold them. Now, twenty years later….

 

** Formal:  ** Sirius remembers his first day at Hogwarts, how, even in a uniform, it still seemed far less formal than his own home.

 

** Fever:  ** Remus curls in bed that winter with a fever, and when he wakes in the night from a fever-dream he finds dog hair in his mouth and against his nose.

 

** Laugh:  ** Did you really expect them to be laughing all their lives?

 

** Lies:  ** November 4th, 1981 , Remus Lupin begins to clean the secrets out of the corners of his house.

 

** Forever:  ** That’s how they felt when they were young—that they would be here always, leaning against their bedposts and the windowsill and the doorway, grinning at each other because the it all went off perfectly.

 

** Overwhelmed:  ** Sirius pins him against the wall and grins at him, and Remus wants to curl on the floor and imagine it without the reality of it—Sirius’s eyes are too clear.

 

** Whisper:  ** This is how they speak in the winters, in the morning, when the heating charms have not kicked in and they do not want to break the ice on the windowsill with their voices.

 

** Wait:  ** Remus is weary of waiting, but he goes on, year after year, as he watches Harry’s birthdays pass.

 

** Talk:  ** They used to be so good at speaking to each other.

 

** Search:  ** He loses that letter, The letter, when he moves house, and as he searches frantically through cardboard boxes he thinks it may have been lost on the street, halfway between here and home.

 

** Hope:  ** Somewhere, in the midst of those twelve years, Remus still finds time to hope.

 

** Eclipse:  ** Sirius wonders sometimes, what would happen if there were a lunar eclipse on the full moon—whether Moony would be able to spend the night as Remus, just watching the blank spot where the moon is, briefly, defeated.

 

** Gravity:  ** The morning after that kiss in the back of the library, Remus wonders whether gravity has gone on holiday to  Barcelona or  Timbuktu .

 

** Highway:  ** The four of them drive northwards, just to drive, just to go somewhere, their last childhood fling before they have to stop pretending they are still going back to Hogwarts in the fall.

 

** Unknown:  ** Remus looks at the boy, shorter than him, with the black hair and the chin (years later, the hair going grey, the chin is still the same), and wonders what his name is.  September the first, 1971 .

 

** Lock:  ** Sirius never locks the bathroom door when he goes in the mornings to take his shower—doesn’t even close it.

 

** Breathe:  ** Flying over  Devonshire in the twilight, Sirius feels the wind at his cheeks and the soft puff of Remus’ breath at the back of his neck.  



End file.
